Pride Toronto

It was more like a queer party than a mid-morning press conference at the 519 Community Centre.

Inside the auditorium, over 100 people gathered as former Pride grand marshals, honoured dykes and award recipients returned their accolades after Pride Toronto banned the term “Israeli apartheid” from its 2010 events.

The audience burst into thunderous applause and rose from their chairs for a standing ovation that lasted almost a minute when Elle Flanders introduced “The 21 Refuseniks” on Tuesday.

Related rabble.ca story:

Open Letter to the Toronto Pride Committee from founders of Pride in 1981:

As founding members of the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee, and people involved in organizing the first Pride event in Toronto at the end of June in 1981, we stand totally opposed to the decision of the current Toronto Pride Committee to ban the use of "Israeli Apartheid" at Toronto Pride events.

After extensive lobbying of Pride Toronto, corporate sponsors and city officials by Martin Gladstone and right-wing Jewish groups, Pride Toronto's Board decided, by a vote of 4 - 3, to disallow the use of the term "Israeli Apartheid" at the 2010 Pride festivities. At a press conference in Toronto on May 25, 2010, Pride Toronto's Executive Director and several Board members were met by 150 outraged protesters chanting "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Censorship has got to go!", "Politics are what makes pride, we won't run, we won't hide", "Whose pride? Our pride! Queers against Apartheid!", and "Resign!"

Don't

Marxism 2010: As Pride Toronto bans the term "Israeli Apartheid" from this year's march, Christine Beckermann looks back on the radical roots of the gay liberation movement, and how the rights we have today didn't come without a fight -- or without radical politics.

This summer will mark the 30th anniversary of the Pride Day celebrations in Toronto. For young people who may be heading out to their first Pride, it would be easy to think that the history of the struggle for LGBT rights has been an onward and upward advance of rational ideas over bigotry and hatred; that through reasoned argument, society and the state have come to accept the case for equal rights.

Over 100 protesters showed up at a Toronto Pride press conference Tuesday to voice their displeasure after the Board of Directors voted last week to forbid the use of the term ‘Israeli Apartheid’ at this year’s Pride Parade.

“We feel that’s a huge step back for pride,” said Tim McCaskell, an organizer with Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). “We’ve never had groups censored at Pride before. The term ‘Israeli Apartheid’ conveys a message which is enormously important for the queer community to understand.”

"The activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid plans to return to the Pride parade this summer raising the possibility of another battle over whether to provide city money to the major gay festival. The group, also known as QuAIA skipped Pride last year to deny Rob Ford what it called a 'pretext' to withdraw the city;s grant...

'The funding decision is the city's itself,' said Howard English, senior vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Location

The Pride & Remembrance RUN is an annual 5K fundraising run/walk kicking off Pride Weekend. The RUN has become an annual tradition promoting and fostering community spirit, goodwill, volunteerism and sportsmanship in the LGBT community. This year's RUN will be raising funds for Fife House, The Pride and Remembrance Foundation and the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.